That democracy poses a threat to property rights, and vice-versa, is as true today as when Aristotle first noted, paradoxically, the following dilemma: "Democracy is when the indigent [poor], and not the men of property, are the rulers."
True democracy—government by the people, as opposed to the contemporary spectacle of political “representation”—is incompatible with the notion of private property. It is widely agreed, even among so-called democratic states themselves, that the realization of true democracy poses a material threat to propertied interests. The democratic "Attitude toward property is communistic—negating property rights" warned the US Army Training Manual of 1928, inculcating among its readers, albeit in negative terms, an increasingly embattled definition of "democracy."
If democracy negates property rights, the reverse must also be true, as Aristotle maintained. The right to hold (or rather, withhold) private property—to enjoy an individual benefit purchased at the expense of the larger community, ecologically as well as sociologically construed—undermines the very foundations of true democracy.
In sham-democratic states of today, including the so-called Commonwealth of Australia, it is unacceptable for citizens to discriminate against one another on the basis of gender, race or religion. At law and in the court of public opinion, discrimination has been superseded with great hue and cry. And yet the poor are still discriminated against—blindly; indiscriminately, as it were—at every petty juncture of their meager and often miserable existences. Poverty is enshrined in law, in the minutiae of regulations which serve to uphold the institution of private property and to protect the interests, increasingly Kevlar-vested, of the propertied class.
By “property” in this context we mean “real estate”, pure and simple; a fundamental distinction recognized at law. For without real property, goods and chattels are mere illusions, transmogrified from assets to liabilities at the slightest touch of the Invisible Hand, that is to say, the profiteer’s whim. This happens because the landless holder of personal goods must needs provide security both for himself (with family, let us say) and for his possessions—and will go into debt, if necessary, in order to achieve it. From there it is a downhill cycle on a dangerous contraption into poverty and despair.
(So-called “intellectual property” presents an analogous, if not identical, “zero-sum game” to the one outlined above, insofar as, legally speaking, it resembles real property. Here too, almost wherever one cares to look, we find a contested virtual terrain on which the true-democratic principle of sharing equally in humanity’s common heritage comes under direct attack from propertied, privately incorporated interests.)
Increase public welfare, the common weal, or impoverish democracy. It’s a no-brainer for today’s sham “representatives” of true-democratic principle and process. Aristotle proposes a middle ground, where private property may—no, must—be held by individuals; but only in trust, as it were, for the benefit of the broader community.
“Tell him he’s dreaming,” comes the retort of the Aussie battler, tentatively ensconced within his thrice-mortgaged suburban castle—should he be so “lucky” as to be living the Great Australian Dream. Even a castle in the air is preferable (if not indeed inherently desirable or valuable) to the grim reality of homelessness, which appears now to be the common lot of an emergent underclass comprising educated and ignorant, worker and unemployed alike. Greater democracy—that is to say, greater welfare, greater regard for the public good; and not greater wealth as our pundits have it—is called for louder and more insistently than ever before.
True democracy—government by the people, as opposed to the contemporary spectacle of political “representation”—is incompatible with the notion of private property. It is widely agreed, even among so-called democratic states themselves, that the realization of true democracy poses a material threat to propertied interests. The democratic "Attitude toward property is communistic—negating property rights" warned the US Army Training Manual of 1928, inculcating among its readers, albeit in negative terms, an increasingly embattled definition of "democracy."
If democracy negates property rights, the reverse must also be true, as Aristotle maintained. The right to hold (or rather, withhold) private property—to enjoy an individual benefit purchased at the expense of the larger community, ecologically as well as sociologically construed—undermines the very foundations of true democracy.
In sham-democratic states of today, including the so-called Commonwealth of Australia, it is unacceptable for citizens to discriminate against one another on the basis of gender, race or religion. At law and in the court of public opinion, discrimination has been superseded with great hue and cry. And yet the poor are still discriminated against—blindly; indiscriminately, as it were—at every petty juncture of their meager and often miserable existences. Poverty is enshrined in law, in the minutiae of regulations which serve to uphold the institution of private property and to protect the interests, increasingly Kevlar-vested, of the propertied class.
By “property” in this context we mean “real estate”, pure and simple; a fundamental distinction recognized at law. For without real property, goods and chattels are mere illusions, transmogrified from assets to liabilities at the slightest touch of the Invisible Hand, that is to say, the profiteer’s whim. This happens because the landless holder of personal goods must needs provide security both for himself (with family, let us say) and for his possessions—and will go into debt, if necessary, in order to achieve it. From there it is a downhill cycle on a dangerous contraption into poverty and despair.
(So-called “intellectual property” presents an analogous, if not identical, “zero-sum game” to the one outlined above, insofar as, legally speaking, it resembles real property. Here too, almost wherever one cares to look, we find a contested virtual terrain on which the true-democratic principle of sharing equally in humanity’s common heritage comes under direct attack from propertied, privately incorporated interests.)
Increase public welfare, the common weal, or impoverish democracy. It’s a no-brainer for today’s sham “representatives” of true-democratic principle and process. Aristotle proposes a middle ground, where private property may—no, must—be held by individuals; but only in trust, as it were, for the benefit of the broader community.
“Tell him he’s dreaming,” comes the retort of the Aussie battler, tentatively ensconced within his thrice-mortgaged suburban castle—should he be so “lucky” as to be living the Great Australian Dream. Even a castle in the air is preferable (if not indeed inherently desirable or valuable) to the grim reality of homelessness, which appears now to be the common lot of an emergent underclass comprising educated and ignorant, worker and unemployed alike. Greater democracy—that is to say, greater welfare, greater regard for the public good; and not greater wealth as our pundits have it—is called for louder and more insistently than ever before.